


Like Baby, Baby, Baby, Oh

by gala_apples



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Headcanon, Kid Fic, Multi, OT7, Polyamory, Post-Canon, Stanley Uris Lives, polyamorous parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:14:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27760585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gala_apples/pseuds/gala_apples
Summary: Fifteen facts about Casa Losers, a year and a half into having their daughter.
Relationships: Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon/Ben Hanscom/Eddie Kaspbrak/Beverly Marsh/Richie Tozier/Stanley Uris
Comments: 5
Kudos: 27





	Like Baby, Baby, Baby, Oh

**Author's Note:**

> Polylosersclub reblogged [this post](https://losersclubisms.tumblr.com/post/632532831378325504/thinking-about-this-againbut-if-someone) and I was immediately fucked. I’m a float staff early childhood educator, so I get to teach infants, toddlers, juniors, and preschoolers. The moment I read the words PolyLosers with a baby I was like I HAVE THOUGHTS. Did I base a few of these on things my favourite toddlers do? Maaaaaybe. Did I copy the scant dialogue of a particular child? Maaaaaybe. Do I LOATHE ENTIRELY the board book Please Say Please? YES!!!
> 
> Secondly, my apologies to Patty Blum and Audra Phillips, but the only Losers with previous relationships in this fic are Bev and possibly Eddie.

1) Richie read somewhere once, way before returning to Derry, never mind Bev’s pregnancy, that babies learn to communicate more quickly if everything they do gets a reaction. He’s always read random shit, it’s a good scratch for the itch that is his ADHD needing new input. It was interesting to learn, but no more or less interesting than the facts of the Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist, or that giant squid are actual creatures in the ocean, not just myth. Certainly irrelevant to him, unless Steve and his wife popped one out. But then there was Maycie. Now he’s unable to let a single babble go by without a ‘good point madame’ or ‘fascinating’ or ‘we’ll have to agree to disagree’. He’ll make exaggerated facial expressions she’ll sometimes mimic, and hand gestures she doesn’t have the fine motor for yet. And occasionally she uses actual words, and it’s just the best fucking thing Richie’s ever heard. Richie could have a conversation about ‘star’ or ‘throw’ for approximately a thousand years, thanks.

2) Eddie hates changing her diapers. Not for the reasons his coworkers would guess. He’s not that much of a ‘poop is gross’ toxic coward dad. Sure he’ll bitch about it out loud, but he did wade into the greywater, ultimately. It’s because Maycie’s prone to diaper rash. She has special wipes, and organic cream. Logically Eddie knows lots of babies get diaper rash, but he freaks out every time she’s red again, and reaches for the wildly expensive cream, then thinks about the pills his mom thought would cure him of ordinary problems, and hates himself a little. Then he gets her tucked back into her tiny clothes and cuddles her as he tries to remind himself Bill and Richie and Ben use it too, and Richie literally wrestled his inhaler out of his hands in the sewer so it can’t be that suspect if they do it too. He’s still not the one to do most of the diapers.

3) These days the Losers spend most of their time cross legged on the floor. To the point that Maycie’s small vocabulary -maybe twenty, thirty words- includes _sit_ , while pointing to the floor. Eighteen months old, and she already knows when the adults she likes sit, they entertain her. Bill jokes they have the most comfortable furniture they won’t use, but really, who wants to be on the couch watching cable tv when they could have a toddler with the tiniest pigtails known to mankind crawling on them? 

4) They can’t send Maycie to daycare. There are definite pros to it, each one a priority in a different adult’s mind. Language acquisition, better immune system, introduction to social skills like sharing and turn taking, diversity, a daily routine. But bottom line is a daycare wouldn’t accept seven adults crashing an intake interview, wouldn’t accept seven fills in for the blanks for contact numbers. Daycare is not set up for nontraditional families, and they’ve spent far too many years alone to pretend that only two of them are together. Four, at max, if they want to claim two of them are husbands, and Bev and someone are the surrogate and her boyfriend. They can’t do it. At least not yet. Unsurprisingly, Mike is not into the idea of homeschooling. Which means by the time Maycie turns six they’ll need to figure out the least painful lie for school paperwork. Maybe if Richie and Stan are ‘divorced’, Richie now dating Mike and Eddie now dating Bill, with Bev and Ben as surrogate? But that leaves Eddie iced out. No matter the combination someone is left out. It’s terrible. Ben’s just happy they can get away with playdates for a few years yet.

5) Stan spends the most time with her outside. He and Mike and Ben are the Losers to maintain a small backyard garden, though Bev will cook delicious dinners from what they manage to grow, homemade tomato sauce and zucchini bread and strawberry crepes. A spouse or three might follow him and Maycie into the yard, lounge in the hammock or on the comfy lawnchairs or sit on the grass, but it’s Stan who opens the back door. He wants to teach her about birds, and leaves, and the clouds. He wants her to never be scared of bugs. He and his daughter dig their hands in the soil together and Stan doesn’t think about dirt under his fingernails, just smiles with how awestruck Maycie is.

6) Ben is covered in bruises. They all are, but as the current stay at home parent -apart from Richie when he’s not on tour- he has it the worst. Stan loves to dress Maycie in cute outfits, and Ben can’t blame him, because _cute outfits_ , but she’s almost always wearing shoes. It would be fine, except one of her favourite things right now is testing her balance. She loves to climb onto someone’s calves and stand there without falling off, and says _no!_ if anyone goes to hold her by the armpits. Which means her tottering from side to side, twenty five pounds of toddler weight digging sneaker heels into his calves. Add that to Maycie’s second favourite game of throwing herself forward onto someone only to catch herself by the adult’s arms, and he’s got a million more bruises on his biceps. Considering the alternative is telling her to stop again and again until her baby brain actually processes it, Ben’s fine with the bruises.

7) The biggest fight they’ve had in the last six months is the day Eddie caught Bill letting Maycie crawl up the steps to go to her second floor bedroom. _Death trap_ and _fucking idiot_ were two of the nicer phrases. _She likes balancing_ was met with _she likes the pretty colours of the dishwasher pods, you gonna allow her that too, fuckface?_. Thankfully Mike and Stan were there in the aftermath with carefully vetted articles about how to safely introduce your toddler to stairs, otherwise they still might not be talking.

8) Casa Losers has a free lawn library. A lot of people in their neighbourhood do. Sometimes the trades are good, sometimes you get trash. Sometimes you get trash you inexplicably love. Maycie’s current favourite book is one of the latter. It’s called Please Say Please. It’s about zoo animals using manners at a house party. Bill doesn’t know what kind of nightmare people market a story including where to place a napkin and eating silently to children so young it’s published as a board book, but more than half of them are uncomfortable reading it to her. Stan can’t read it at all, it reminds him of his strict parents too much. Their collective solution is to change the repeated ‘no, it’s wrong’ to just a warbled _no0o0_ and smile like they don’t mean any of it. But Maycie loves Please Say Please. Sometimes she just holds it and flips through the thick cardboard pages saying _No! No! No!_. The sight of her happy is the only thing that stops Bill from throwing it in the fucking trash, nevermind sticking it back in the library hutch. 

9) Maycie doesn’t have much in the way of grandparents. Eddie’s mom, Bev’s dad and Mike’s grandparents are dead. Bill’s parents have made it clear they can’t handle seeing a toddler. That leaves the Urises, the Toziers, and the Hanscoms. Except not really. The Urises tend to be disgusted with every choice Stan makes, including coparenting a baby with multiple lovers, and want nothing to do with him until he “smartens up”. The Toziers are less wrathful, more indifferent. They haven’t flown out or even Skyped once since the birth. So really, Maycie has Grammy Hanscom. Grammy Hanscom more than makes up for everyone else though. She fucking moved out to New York as soon as Ben gave her the news, dropped everything. At least once a month she delivers a ‘surprise Grammy cake’. Maycie doesn’t care now, but in a year she’ll be the standard sugar fiend preschooler and it’ll mean a lot. 

10) She has about a billion aunts and uncles. First birthday parties are not for the birthday boy or girl, they’re thrown as bragging rights for parents proud of not chucking their new squalling parasite into the sea despite having a million colicky opportunities. When the Losers threw hers, everyone might have gotten a little invite happy. Half the cast of Attic Room showed up and six months later Audra is still asking for pics and suggesting baby modeling. Devon from Ben’s gym, Richie’s manager Steve, Kunwal, Bev’s procurer of fabric bolts; they’re all lucky enough to have a friend or two that likes hearing stories and will babysit on date nights.

11) Mike cries the first time he reads her a well meaning gifted Oh The Places You’ll Go. He took so few steps away from his cage. The family ended up in New York, mere hours from Maine. He still hasn’t been to Florida. But he wouldn’t trade dreams of geography for his active, visceral love. What really matters is that he got out of The Waiting Place, right? Who cares if the mountains he moved moved five inches, when he’s got a baby in fleecy footie pyjamas in his arms?

12) The zebra walker is a favourite toy. It’s also a shin breaker. Maycie sprints full blast with it constantly, and doesn’t care what, or where, or who she crashes into. The paint on the walls has scuff marks at a foot off the floor. Being around her in a room with a floor tidy enough to move unimpeded is a death trap. Everyone jokes she learned her road rage from Eddie. Eddie is viciously sarcastic every time it comes up, but secretly he’s planning on teaching Maycie to say ‘stay in your lane’ when she’s got more words.

13) Maycie loves looking through windows. Driving with her would be annoying if it wasn’t so adorable. She spends every car ride straining against the torment of her car seat, trying to get closer to the window, yelling out _hi!_ and waving every ten seconds at anything vaguely person shaped. Richie’s suggested they perform pantomimes outside the window wall in the dining room, really give her something to watch. He’s shot down by a far narrower margin than Stan would have thought. He hates the idea of warping Maycie’s reality like that, making her tiny brain wonder why her parents aren’t being normal. It’s everything he’s spent decades fearing. Not one to pass on a bad idea though, Richie goes out of his way to round the side of the house from the four car garage entrance so he can walk by the dining room. He usually even texts Ben first, to make sure his toddler audience is prepped and waiting. Stan would fight Richie about it, except Maycie takes delight in the act, and Stan’s also spent decades fearing imposing his viewpoint on his children and making them feel wrong. Instead he just gets Ben to warn him, if he’s already home before Richie gets in.

14) Bev’s always wanted to have a bright and fun house. Her father’s was dank and miserable, her aunt’s was white and pristine, and Tom’s was cavernous and dark. The nursery was a hot topic of conversation for most of her pregnancy, starting with paint and fabric colours, moving to Bill or Stan painting a mural, moving to Ben suggesting installing a plexiglass wall for easy drawing upon and washing clean. By the time Maycie’s born everyone’s come along to Bev’s way of thinking: baskets of markers and free reign. At eighteen months they still have to watch that the chunky crayons don’t go in her mouth, they have to sit and scribble on the baseboards with her, but Bev knows as she gets older their house will get more and more vibrant, more and more their own.

15) Mike and Richie love to dance with Maycie, dancing of course being at the loosest definition of the word. At her age dancing is doing tiny little squats while smiling. None of them have ever been much for real dancing, no one slick and coordinated enough for it, but sometimes it’s hilariously fun to flail and pony-prance your way through a fast tempo Wheels On The Bus. A video uploaded by Bev of Richie, Mike, Ben and Maycie’s What Does The Fox Say dance moves is one of Trashmouth Tozier’s top viewed Youtube videos, second only to a fan-recording of his coming out show.


End file.
